Visual Recognition Technology Comes to the Dairy Farm

Video recognition technology on a Dairy Farm may seem like science fiction, but it’s not. In this week’s founder story, meet Artiom Timanov, CEO and Co-founder of Cattle Care.

Tell us about your Company

Using low-cost video cameras, Cattle Care detects, recognizes and tracks every cow as well as business processes. In turn, the farmer is better able to make decisions about the treatment of a particular cow or a whole barn.

How did your company get started?

In my previous company, we were using computer vision technologies to help retail companies understand their customers and, consequently, adjust the music and video content for particular audiences. At the same time, my co-founder, Ilya Kolin, has a strong background in producing and selling video equipment for dairy farms. We got together and decided to merge our expertise.

The combined result of computer vision technology and video equipment has produced a more valuable and productive application for dairy farms of all sizes.

Describe your current stage

We have installed our product on two customer farms in California and are collecting data while sharing with the farmers to allow them to make better decisions around their care of the cattle. We have also recently started to sell the product to other states.

What made you interested in joining the DFA Accelerator?

Because of its size, DFA has the resources to help us better understand the dairy industry.

We are excited to leverage the DFA connections among the industry and their member farmers.

Plus, we hope to benefit by learning from the experience, skills, and network of DFA’s team.

What are your goals in being part of this program?

We want to use the resources of the program to determine the best go-to-market strategy for our technology. We also want to work with DFA to ensure our software delivers the best value to dairy producers.

What has been your biggest takeaway or benefit from the program so far?

So far, not even halfway through the program, DFA is already making great connections for us among the U.S. Dairy Industry.

What has been the most exciting/fun/hilarious moment of the program so far?

We had the amazing opportunity to pitch our companies to the DFA Board of Directors. The directors listened to our pitches and asked very industry-specific questions about our product. We were also able to network with the directors and learn straight from dairy farmers the problems they are facing.

Do you have any advice or thoughts you’d want to share with future entrepreneurs?

It’s true for the vast majority of industries, but especially in Agtech, there is a huge gap between producers and technology companies. Sometimes it feels like founders of startups visit a couple of conferences, get an idea, and then somehow “they know” what to build. I recommend to future entrepreneurs to “get out of the building” as much as possible and spend weeks and months among producers, then there is a chance to build something that producers really need.